NOTE: This is the second of two columns discussing the validity of man-induced climate change. You can find the first column here: “Hot Air Hooliganism, Part I.”

“If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power.” — Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,” 1995 —

Yesterday we got a glimpse of the “methodologies” — and I use that word very loosely — of some of my critics’ claims regarding the mythology of man-induced climate change.

Today, let’s investigate a bit of the rest of the alleged “science” underlying this political ploy for power — as it, too, is shot through and fraught with fraud from one end to the other. Consider:

■ Falsification and/or obliteration of data: The instances of this are simply too numerous to document here, but let’s look at a major one:

“’The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send it to anyone … We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.’”(“Global warming with the lid off,” “Wall Street Journal,” Nov. 24, 2009.)

That little nugget came from Phil Jones, then director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, as one of thousands of emails that had been hacked off the CRU’s email server.

In those emails, the article continues, “scientists appear to urge each other to present a ‘unified’ view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the ‘common cause’; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to ‘hide the decline’ of temperature in certain inconvenient data.”

And this is “science”? No, it’s Hot Air Hooliganism at its prime. By the way, whatever happened to all that data the CRU had been collecting for decades?

“In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis.” (“Govt-funded research unit destroyed original climate data,” “Competitive Enterprise Institute,”www.cei.org, Oct. 5, 2009.)

Wow! Amazing how some things just happen, isn’t it?

■ Consistently wrong predictions: Since its inception under the auspices of the United Nations back in 1985, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued five Assessment Reports — and all five have fallen flat on their faces when it comes to predicting anything relevant about climate change. As just one example:

“A leaked draft of a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is understood to concede that the computer predictions for global warming and the effects of carbon emissions have been proved to be inaccurate … One of the central issues is believed to be why the IPCC failed to account for the ‘pause’ in global warming, which they admit that they did not predict in their computer models. Since 1997, world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase.” (“Top climate scientists admit global warming forecasts were wrong,” “The Telegraph,”www.telegraph.co.uk, Sep. 15, 2013.)

Oops! And there’s more: “The summary also shows that scientists have now discovered that between 950 and 1250 AD, before the Industrial Revolution, parts of the world were as warm for decades at a time as they are now.”

Which leads us to one more point:

■ All observed phenomena are within natural variation ranges: Despite all the hype and hooliganism, all aspects of documented climate change measurement — whether it’s the temperatures, the levels of the oceans, the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, the quantities of ice in the polar ice caps, etc. — are well within normal fluctuational averages.

As in: “We examine how physical factors spanning climate and weather contributed to record warmth over the central and eastern United States in March 2012, when daily temperature anomalies at many locations exceeded 20°C … We conclude that the extreme warmth over the central and eastern United States in March 2012 resulted primarily from natural climate and weather variability.” (“The making of an extreme event: Putting the pieces together,” “American Meteorological Society,”www.journals.ametsoc.org, May 1, 2014.)

The history of science is littered with the relics of busted hypotheses that couldn’t stand up to the truth: “Phlogiston,” the planet “Vulcan,” “spontaneous generation” and the “luminiferous aether” to name just a few.

When the REAL science behind climate change is finally stripped of its government funding and irrational preconceptions, “anthropogenic global warming” will be the latest casualty on that list. Let’s just hope that our energy, industry and civilization don’t have to experience another intervening Dark Age first.

Bradley Harrington is a computer technician and a writer who lives in Cheyenne. Email:bradhgt1776@gmail.com.